How faithful is it to the original? I remember the original as being a movie about how enemy combatants refused to wear a uniform, blend into the civilian population, and commit terrorist acts against an occuping army. Conservatives loved it. Weird.

The filmed this movie in and around Pontiac, MI, where I was working at the time. We could hear the explosions from our office. The sad thing is they didn't really have to do much to make the city look like it was war-torn.

xynix:The movie was gritty and the casting was spot on. These were desperate, scared, and pissed off kids who were trained in using firearms to a degree by their parents - lifelong hunters. The movie, at least to me, was very believable.

That's the biggest problem I have with all these remakes: they're too perfect. When the fights are so coreograhed they look like a dance, except both characters are just ordinary people with no fight training, it just breaks the movie. Same with the supermodels with perfect hair and teeth that are supposed to be high school kids. Not buying it.

I've been watching a lot of BBC. Most of the time the actors actually look like real people, and it makes the experience so much better.

In its defense, North Korea is essentially a Bond villian. I mean, it is a country too, but basically it's SPECTRE, or Hugo Drax, or Auric Goldfinger. So, in that way, it is as believable as Bond.

Now, this is why aliens makes the best Red Dawn antagonist. Make them red...give them nicknames like Martian or Rusties. Have them invade after disabling our nukes and internet or something. Then they kill off everyone over 40 leaving the fight to the youngsters.

GoodyearPimp:Original movie: Russians, Cubans, AND Mexicans invade. Not terribly plausible unless they had developed the tech to wipe our our ability to respond, but it's a small leap and a fun escape-from-reality movie.

This movie: One nation with considerably less man-power, economics, technology, and the rest.... decides to drive/fly across the Pacific to invade the US mainland. South Korea, Japan, China, and even Russia apparently sit around letting it happen (and if they were to suddenly change their tune, apparently decide not to assist NK).

Didn't see the movie did you? Next time watch a movie before you try to make comments like this about it.

It wasn't just NK that invaded. NK was part of a coalition of countries that invaded. NK part of the invasion was to invade and hold the Pacific Northwest, which is why this movie takes place in Seattle.It was also explained that Russia held the East Coast, China was mentioned as being part of the invasion. It was also mentioned that most of the U.S Military force was deployed handling conflicts in the Middle East and NATO was basically defunct because most of the European countries were in economic collapse.

Now the movie does take huge suspension of belief to believe, especially the A-Team like montage were the kids get accelerated military training from a Marine on leave, but for what it was, it wasn't a bad movie.

Jim_Callahan:And yet when we make movies where the US is the villain, the US audience still watches it with no qualms whatsoever. The Bourne movies would be a good example.

A basic sense of humor and perspective is required to function in the modern world, China should take note of that in their efforts to catch up to the rest of us.

Their response to this is typically along the lines of "We've been the largest economy in the world for 18 out of the last 20 centuries, and we're going to be the biggest in the 21st Century too. What do you mean "effort to catch up"?

I went and saw it over the holiday. It was a cheesy action movie. Pretty much what you'd expect from a remake of a cheesy action movie. I enjoyed the terrorist-style fighting, but sadly there weren't as many of these as I hoped for.

There were 3 things that annoyed me:

- I REALLY wanted to cock-punch the younger brother. He just has one of those faces that seem punchable.

- In an extremely short period of time, these kids turned from suburban morons to C4-using, pinpoint accurate shooters. Even if the main character was a Marine there is no way he could train them up fast enough to do what they did. I wish the director had made them a bit "sloppier".

- I hated the team of old guys that dropped in asking for help stealing something. They were chubby and old, far from what I would consider a Seal or Ranger. Even in the original, the Air Force pilot seems like more of a bad-ass.

coeyagi:Care to find one that breaks that mold (villain is American, hero is foreign)? Not saying there aren't, but none come to mind quickly.

Diamonds are Forever, I suppose. Or at least that was the case in the book, I can't say I remember the movie particularly.

The Godfather was all about how the immigrant generation of the family was relatively virtuous where their american-born descendants were evil little shiats.

Enter the Dragon, while not a US movie as such, sold very well here and the villain was Chuck Norris, his character literally called "the American" through most of the movie.

Apocalypse Now, currently considered something of a classic, doesn't really have a protagonist but the US in all its forms is definitively the villain on every level.

I think just the fact that I can reel these off from the top of my head without resorting to Google and none of them are terribly obscure kinda demonstrates my point, I think. By and large we have a very high tolerance for people casting us in a negative light, it's one of the biggest things we've got going for us as a civilization. British media tends to be somewhat similar, as does French. Basically, it's one of the fast ways to tell whether a nation is a first-world country or not, if they are then the majority of their citizens are willing to acknowledge that their land has its faults.

Headso:coeyagi: Care to find one that breaks that mold (villain is American, hero is foreign)? Not saying there aren't, but none come to mind quickly.

one of the Bond films?

Yeah, that would probably be a handful, maybe a half dozen. A View to a Kill. The Living Daylights (one of the villains, the Joe Don Baker one). Not as familiar with the older Bond movies.

But Bond has a global audience, and the difference again is that the villain isn't a US government agent or entity. The villain would have been the Chinese army and government in the original version. Can you imagine Saving Private Feichtinger doing well in the United States?

Show me any film for an American audience where the American military or U.S. government is the villain and some foreigner or foreign group is the protagonist. Because that would be the appropriate counter example to this movie and why the Chinese were not the enemy.

You may want to let 0bama know that: "take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents -- number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back"

Show me any film for an American audience where the American military or U.S. government is the villain and some foreigner or foreign group is the protagonist. Because that would be the appropriate counter example to this movie and why the Chinese were not the enemy.

Show me any film for an American audience where the American military or U.S. government is the villain and some foreigner or foreign group is the protagonist. Because that would be the appropriate counter example to this movie and why the Chinese were not the enemy.

Tigger:Their response to this is typically along the lines of "We've been the largest economy in the world for 18 out of the last 20 centuries, and we're going to be the biggest in the 21st Century too. What do you mean "effort to catch up"?

Culturally and technologically, mostly. They're still hurting from that whole bit where they murdered the everloving shiat out of every educated person they could find during the later bits of their revolution, that sorta backfired on them hard.

The fact that mainland China (as opposed to Hong Kong) has produced all of two or three movies that anyone gave a shiat about internationally in the entirety of the last century is actually a really, really big sore spot with them.

//"We're going to be the biggest economy of the 21st century" is more diplomatic braggadocio than something that's actually going to happen. The US still has easily twice the nominal GDP of China, as will the EU if it ever gets its act together and starts acting as an actual unified economy.

Show me any film for an American audience where the American military or U.S. government is the villain and some foreigner or foreign group is the protagonist. Because that would be the appropriate counter example to this movie and why the Chinese were not the enemy.

Show me any film for an American audience where the American military or U.S. government is the villain and some foreigner or foreign group is the protagonist. Because that would be the appropriate counter example to this movie and why the Chinese were not the enemy.

Inglorious Bastards? I had a hard time identifying with unrepentant two dimensional sociopaths. All the Nazis, while being Nazis, were more fully developed, and as such, more sympathetic. Very strange ass movie.

I_C_Weener:DarnoKonrad: coeyagi: Okay, we are at the crux of the argument now.

Show me any film for an American audience where the American military or U.S. government is the villain and some foreigner or foreign group is the protagonist. Because that would be the appropriate counter example to this movie and why the Chinese were not the enemy.

E.T.

Starman.

Dr. Strangelove

I'll give you Strangelove, but Starman and E.T. are kinda thin since they are extra terrestrials. Are Americans going to lash out and f*ck with trade relations with the Vulcans when those types of movies come out?

coeyagi:I_C_Weener: DarnoKonrad: coeyagi: Okay, we are at the crux of the argument now.

Show me any film for an American audience where the American military or U.S. government is the villain and some foreigner or foreign group is the protagonist. Because that would be the appropriate counter example to this movie and why the Chinese were not the enemy.

E.T.

Starman.

Dr. Strangelove

I'll give you Strangelove, but Starman and E.T. are kinda thin since they are extra terrestrials. Are Americans going to lash out and f*ck with trade relations with the Vulcans when those types of movies come out?

Fun fact: the writer behind the original Red Dawn, John Milius, is one of Hollywood's most famous republicans, and was the basis for John Goodman's character in The Big Lebowski.

If you're into this sort of thing, try reading his original screenplay for Apocalypse Now. It's hilarious, and ends with Martin Sheen's character single-handedly shooting down all of the planes after he calls in the airstrike.

I_C_Weener:coeyagi: I_C_Weener: DarnoKonrad: coeyagi: Okay, we are at the crux of the argument now.

Show me any film for an American audience where the American military or U.S. government is the villain and some foreigner or foreign group is the protagonist. Because that would be the appropriate counter example to this movie and why the Chinese were not the enemy.

E.T.

Starman.

Dr. Strangelove

I'll give you Strangelove, but Starman and E.T. are kinda thin since they are extra terrestrials. Are Americans going to lash out and f*ck with trade relations with the Vulcans when those types of movies come out?

Failsafe.

Incorrect. They redeemed themselves by letting the Soviets bomb New York, if I recall. The antagonist was technology. Again, IIRC.

I_C_Weener:coeyagi: I_C_Weener: DarnoKonrad: coeyagi: Okay, we are at the crux of the argument now.

Show me any film for an American audience where the American military or U.S. government is the villain and some foreigner or foreign group is the protagonist. Because that would be the appropriate counter example to this movie and why the Chinese were not the enemy.

E.T.

Starman.

Dr. Strangelove

I'll give you Strangelove, but Starman and E.T. are kinda thin since they are extra terrestrials. Are Americans going to lash out and f*ck with trade relations with the Vulcans when those types of movies come out?

Though, that said, we established the general point (that the US will still watch movies where the US is the villain, or even cartoonishly evil) a long while back and now we're just moving the goal posts more and more arbitrarily specific as an academic exercise.

coeyagi:I_C_Weener: DarnoKonrad: coeyagi: Okay, we are at the crux of the argument now.

Show me any film for an American audience where the American military or U.S. government is the villain and some foreigner or foreign group is the protagonist. Because that would be the appropriate counter example to this movie and why the Chinese were not the enemy.

E.T.

Starman.

Dr. Strangelove

I'll give you Strangelove, but Starman and E.T. are kinda thin since they are extra terrestrials. Are Americans going to lash out and f*ck with trade relations with the Vulcans when those types of movies come out?

Strangelove is more like one crazy guy who happens to be American and the insanity of the arms race

coeyagi:I_C_Weener: coeyagi: I_C_Weener: DarnoKonrad: coeyagi: Okay, we are at the crux of the argument now.

Show me any film for an American audience where the American military or U.S. government is the villain and some foreigner or foreign group is the protagonist. Because that would be the appropriate counter example to this movie and why the Chinese were not the enemy.

E.T.

Starman.

Dr. Strangelove

I'll give you Strangelove, but Starman and E.T. are kinda thin since they are extra terrestrials. Are Americans going to lash out and f*ck with trade relations with the Vulcans when those types of movies come out?

Failsafe.

Incorrect. They redeemed themselves by letting the Soviets bomb New York, if I recall. The antagonist was technology. Again, IIRC.

you don't RC.lame try.

by the way, when did you say the villain was not allowed to redeem themselves? Isn't that a standard option for plots?keep moving those goal posts.

Though, that said, we established the general point (that the US will still watch movies where the US is the villain, or even cartoonishly evil) a long while back and now we're just moving the goal posts more and more arbitrarily specific as an academic exercise.

Ok, but can you honestly state that there is a very close counter point (for U.S. audiences) where the U.S. military or government invades another country and the citizens of that country are the protagonists. Yes, I am moving the goalposts so that they mirror this movie.

Again, I am not saying there aren't, and I will shake and mea culpa if you find one just like this movie but in reverse.

Though, that said, we established the general point (that the US will still watch movies where the US is the villain, or even cartoonishly evil) a long while back and now we're just moving the goal posts more and more arbitrarily specific as an academic exercise.

Ok, but can you honestly state that there is a very close counter point (for U.S. audiences) where the U.S. military or government invades another country and the citizens of that country are the protagonists. Yes, I am moving the goalposts so that they mirror this movie.

Again, I am not saying there aren't, and I will shake and mea culpa if you find one just like this movie but in reverse.

Though, that said, we established the general point (that the US will still watch movies where the US is the villain, or even cartoonishly evil) a long while back and now we're just moving the goal posts more and more arbitrarily specific as an academic exercise.

Ok, but can you honestly state that there is a very close counter point (for U.S. audiences) where the U.S. military or government invades another country and the citizens of that country are the protagonists. Yes, I am moving the goalposts so that they mirror this movie.

Again, I am not saying there aren't, and I will shake and mea culpa if you find one just like this movie but in reverse.

Nevermind. Someone is going to answer with an example out of the Civil War. I'll have to keep moving it. Forget it. An apples to apples comparison is most likely impossible.